Surfsoft Consulting Blog

The Joy of JSF

Phil — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 12:03:08 +0000

Android has been taking a back seat recently (although that is about to change) as the new Formula One season looms and I’ve been comprehensively overhauling the fantasy game web site I’ve been running for over ten years, fantasy-f1.net. Last year I spent three months removing the Struts MVC layer, restructuring the underlying code and …

Social Apps on Android

Phil — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 09:10:53 +0000

At this year’s Devoxx, Google’s Tim Bray gave a thought-provoking keynote which covered several areas but what stood out for me were his comments around writing applications for Android. In summary his message was “give software away and sell a service” and “make it social”. Giving software away and selling a service is a whole …

Android, Grails and Heroku

Phil — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:36:36 +0000

Having published a first Android application Audio Clock in the Android Market my attention has turned to developing something new. Audio Clock was simple but this new application is on a whole other scale. Audio Clock had a minimal UI – in fact just some configuration views and a notification bar entry – and ran in the …

Galaxy Tab 10.1 USB File Transfer Issues Explained

Phil — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 08:40:16 +0000

Having struggled, cursed, been derided by iPad owners and got really irked over the synchronisation issues with the Galaxy Tab 10.1 I have spent some more time in the last few days looking into the problem in more detail. I was prompted to do this by the arrival, over the air, of Android 3.1 – …

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (Google I/O Edition) – First Impressions

Phil — Mon, 16 May 2011 17:14:43 +0000

At Google I/O this year I was lucky enough to receive a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, one of the latest Android tablets to ship with Android 3.0 (Honeycomb). However, being a Samsung item it does have its downsides. Samsung for some reason known only to themselves have endowed it with Samsung Kies, a synchronisation utility …

Using Maven for Android Development

Phil — Thu, 05 May 2011 15:12:06 +0000

As a habitual Maven user I’ve got used to the ease with which I can run through a build and test process and get a deployable artefact out at the end of it. I’ve been playing with Android for some time, and now I’m ready to do some serious development it is only natural that …

OS X Account Migration Sleight of Hand

Phil — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 13:16:03 +0000

I recently discovered that my MacBook Pro had developed a fault whereby the DVD drive would read any DVD I cared to insert but would no longer accept blank DVDs. This turned out to be a known issue with certain brands of drive that Apple use, or just dirt on the lens (take your pick …

Android 2.2.1 – No Release Notes, No Install

Phil — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 14:11:31 +0000

When Android 2.2.1 was pushed to my Nexus One I was reluctant to install it immediately. So I googled for release notes and found none. This did nothing to soothe my (perhaps irrational) concern that I was upgrading to an unknown quantity. Eventually I upgraded and of course there were no dramas. My curiosity however …

Writing a simple Android widget

Phil — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 13:49:45 +0000

A widget in Android is something that sits on the home screen and does something more than just allow you to start an application. Android ships with some built-in widgets and many applications provide widgets of their own. In this post, and its associated download, I aim to demonstrate that widgets can actually achieve a …

Eclipse Keyboard Shortcuts

Phil — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 11:00:34 +0000

Being a regular Eclipse user I’ve been somewhat slow to learn all of the really useful keyboard shortcuts. Hunting around for a cheat sheet the only one I can find is this one from the Eclipse-Tools project on sourceforge. The only downside to this fairly comprehensive cheat sheet is that it appears not to have …